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twg_000000040800 | by four large Sugar Pines which lay crumbling beneath them,an instance of conditions which have enabled Sequoias to crowd out the pines. [Illustration: MUIR GORGE, TUOLUMNE CAONYOSEMITE NATIONAL PARK.] I also noted eighty-six vigorous saplings upon a piece of fresh ground prepared for their reception by fire. Thus fire, the great destroyer of Sequoia, also furnishes bare virgin ground, one | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040801 | of the conditions essential for its growth from the seed. Fresh ground is, however, furnished in sufficient quantities for the constant renewal of the forests without fire, viz., by the fall of old trees. The soil is thus upturned and mellowed, and many trees are planted for every one that falls. Land-slips and floods also give rise to bare virgin | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040802 | ground; and a tree now and then owes its existence to a burrowing wolf or squirrel, but the most regular supply of fresh soil is furnished by the fall of aged trees. The climatic changes in progress in the Sierra, bearing on the tenure of tree life, are entirely misapprehended, especially as to the time and the means employed by | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040803 | Nature in effecting them. It is constantly asserted in a vague way that the Sierra was vastly wetter than now, and that the increasing drought will of itself extinguish Sequoia, leaving its ground to other trees supposed capable of nourishing in a drier climate. But that Sequoia can and does grow on as dry ground as any of its present | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040804 | rivals, is manifest in a thousand places. Why, then, it will be asked, are Sequoias always found in greatest abundance in well-watered places where streams are exceptionally abundant? Simply because a growth of Sequoias creates those streams. The thirsty mountaineer knows well that in every Sequoia grove he will find running water, but it is a mistake to suppose that | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040805 | the water is the cause of the grove being there; on the contrary, the grove is the cause of the water being there. Drain off the water and the trees will remain, but cut off the trees, and the streams will vanish. Never was cause more completely mistaken for effect than in the case of these related phenomena of Sequoia | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040806 | woods and perennial streams, and I confess that at first I shared in the blunder. When attention is called to the method of Sequoia stream-making, it will be apprehended at once. The roots of this immense tree fill the ground, forming a thick sponge that absorbs and holds back the rains and melting snows, only allowing them to ooze and | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040807 | flow gently. Indeed, every fallen leaf and rootlet, as well as long clasping root, and prostrate trunk, may be regarded as a dam hoarding the bounty of storm-clouds, and dispensing it as blessings all through the summer, instead of allowing it to go headlong in short-lived floods. Evaporation is also checked by the dense foliage to a greater extent than | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040808 | by any other Sierra tree, and the air is entangled in masses and broad sheets that are quickly saturated; while thirsty winds are not allowed to go sponging and licking along the ground. So great is the retention of water in many places in the main belt, that bogs and meadows are created by the killing of the trees. A | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040809 | single trunk falling across a stream in the woods forms a dam feet long, and from ten to thirty feet high, giving rise to a pond which kills the trees within its reach. These dead trees fall in turn, thus making a clearing, while sediments gradually accumulate changing the pond into a bog, or meadow, for a growth of carices | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040810 | and sphagnum. In some instances a series of small bogs or meadows rise above one another on a hillside, which are gradually merged into one another, forming sloping bogs, or meadows, which make striking features of Sequoia woods, and since all the trees that have fallen into them have been preserved, they contain records of the generations that have passed | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040811 | since they began to form. Since, then, it is a fact that thousands of Sequoias are growing thriftily on what is termed dry ground, and even clinging like mountain pines to rifts in granite precipices; and since it has also been shown that the extra moisture found in connection with the denser growths is an effect of their presence, instead | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040812 | of a cause of their presence, then the notions as to the former extension of the species and its near approach to extinction, based upon its supposed dependence on greater moisture, are seen to be erroneous. The decrease in the rain- and snow-fall since the close of the glacial period in the Sierra is much less than is commonly guessed. | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040813 | The highest post-glacial watermarks are well preserved in all the upper river channels, and they are not greatly higher than the spring floodmarks of the present; showing conclusively that no extraordinary decrease has taken place in the volume of the upper tributaries of post-glacial Sierra streams since they came into existence. But in the mean time, eliminating all this complicated | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040814 | question of climatic change, the plain fact remains that _the present rain- and snow-fall is abundantly sufficient for the luxuriant growth of Sequoia forests_. Indeed, all my observations tend to show that in a prolonged drought the Sugar Pines and firs would perish before the Sequoia, not alone because of the greater longevity of individual trees, but because the species | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040815 | can endure more drought, and make the most of whatever moisture falls. Again, if the restriction and irregular distribution of the species be interpreted as a result of the desiccation of the range, then instead of increasing as it does in individuals toward the south where the rainfall is less, it should diminish. If, then, the peculiar distribution of Sequoia | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040816 | has not been governed by superior conditions of soil as to fertility or moisture, by what has it been governed? In the course of my studies I observed that the northern groves, the only ones I was at first acquainted with, were located on just those portions of the general forest soil-belt that were first laid bare toward the close | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040817 | of the glacial period when the ice-sheet began to break up into individual glaciers. And while searching the wide basin of the San Joaquin, and trying to account for the absence of Sequoia where every condition seemed favorable for its growth, it occured to me that this remarkable gap in the Sequoia belt is located exactly in the basin of | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040818 | the vast ancient _mer de glace_ of the San Joaquin and Kings River basins, which poured its frozen floods to the plain, fed by the snows that fell on more than fifty miles of the summit. I then perceived that the next great gap in the belt to the northward, forty miles wide, extending between the Calaveras and Tuolumne groves, | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040819 | occurs in the basin of the great ancient _mer de glace_ of the Tuolumne and Stanislaus basins, and that the smaller gap between the Merced and Mariposa groves occurs in the basin of the smaller glacier of the Merced. _The wider the ancient glacier, the wider the corresponding gap in the Sequoia belt_. Finally, pursuing my investigations across the basins | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040820 | of the Kaweah and Tule, I discovered that the Sequoia belt attained its greatest development just where, owing to the topographical peculiarities of the region, the ground had been most perfectly protected from the main ice-rivers that continued to pour past from the summit fountains long after the smaller local glaciers had been melted. Taking now a general view of | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040821 | the belt, beginning at the south, we see that the majestic ancient glaciers were shed off right and left down the valleys of Kern and Kings rivers by the lofty protective spurs outspread embracingly above the warm Sequoia-filled basins of the Kaweah and Tule. Then, next northward, occurs the wide Sequoia-less channel, or basin, of the ancient San Joaquin and | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040822 | Kings River _mer de glace_; then the warm, protected spots of Fresno and Mariposa groves; then the Sequoia-less channel of the ancient Merced glacier; next the warm, sheltered ground of the Merced and Tuolumne groves; then the Sequoia-less channel of the grand ancient _mer de glace_ of the Tuolumne and Stanislaus; then the warm old ground of the Calaveras and | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040823 | Stanislaus groves. It appears, therefore, that just where, at a certain period in the history of the Sierra, the glaciers were not, there the Sequoia is, and just where the glaciers were, there the Sequoia is not. [Illustration: VIEW IN TUOLUMNE CAON, YOSEMITE NATIONAL PARK.] What the other conditions may have been that enabled Sequoia to establish itself upon these | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040824 | oldest and warmest portions of the main glacial soil-belt, I cannot say. I might venture to state, however, in this connection, that since the Sequoia forests present a more and more ancient aspect as they extend southward, I am inclined to think that the species was distributed from the south, while the Sugar Pine, its great rival in the northern | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040825 | groves, seems to have come around the head of the Sacramento valley and down the Sierra from the north; consequently, when the Sierra soil-beds were first thrown open to preemption on the melting of the ice-sheet, the Sequoia may have established itself along the available portions of the south half of the range prior to the arrival of the Sugar | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040826 | Pine, while the Sugar Pine took possession of the north half prior to the arrival of Sequoia. But however much uncertainty may attach to this branch of the question, there are no obscuring shadows upon the grand general relationship we have pointed out between the present distribution of Sequoia and the ancient glaciers of the Sierra. And when we bear | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040827 | in mind that all the present forests of the Sierra are young, growing on moraine soil recently deposited, and that the flank of the range itself, with all its landscapes, is new-born, recently sculptured, and brought to the light of day from beneath the ice mantle of the glacial winter, then a thousand lawless mysteries disappear, and broad harmonies take | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040828 | their places. But although all the observed phenomena bearing on the post-glacial history of this colossal tree point to the conclusion that it never was more widely distributed on the Sierra since the close of the glacial epoch; that its present forests are scarcely past prime, if, indeed, they have reached prime; that the post-glacial day of the species is | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040829 | probably not half done; yet, when from a wider outlook the vast antiquity of the genus is considered, and its ancient richness in species and individuals; comparing our Sierra Giant and _Sequoia sempervirens_ of the Coast Range, the only other living species of Sequoia, with the twelve fossil species already discovered and described by Heer and Lesquereux, some of which | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040830 | seem to have flourished over vast areas in the Arctic regions and in Europe and our own territories, during tertiary and cretaceous times,then indeed it becomes plain that our two surviving species, restricted to narrow belts within the limits of California, are mere remnants of the genus, both as to species and individuals, and that they probably are verging to | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040831 | extinction. But the verge of a period beginning in cretaceous times may have a breadth of tens of thousands of years, not to mention the possible existence of conditions calculated to multiply and rextend both species and individuals. This, however, is a branch of the question into which I do not now purpose to enter. In studying the fate of | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040832 | our forest king, we have thus far considered the action of purely natural causes only; but, unfortunately, _man_ is in the woods, and waste and pure destruction are making rapid headway. If the importance of forests were at all understood, even from an economic standpoint, their preservation would call forth the most watchful attention of government. Only of late years | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040833 | by means of forest reservations has the simplest groundwork for available legislation been laid, while in many of the finest groves every species of destruction is still moving on with accelerated speed. In the course of my explorations I found no fewer than five mills located on or near the lower edge of the Sequoia belt, all of which were | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040834 | cutting considerable quantities of Big Tree lumber. Most of the Fresno group are doomed to feed the mills recently erected near them, and a company of lumbermen are now cutting the magnificent forest on Kings River. In these milling operations waste far exceeds use, for after the choice young manageable trees on any given spot have been felled, the woods | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040835 | are fired to clear the ground of limbs and refuse with reference to further operations, and, of course, most of the seedlings and saplings are destroyed. These mill ravages, however, are small as compared with the comprehensive destruction caused by sheepmen. Incredible numbers of sheep are driven to the mountain pastures every summer, and their course is ever marked by | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040836 | desolation. Every wild garden is trodden down, the shrubs are stripped of leaves as if devoured by locusts, and the woods are burned. Running fires are set everywhere, with a view to clearing the ground of prostrate trunks, to facilitate the movements of the flocks and improve the pastures. The entire forest belt is thus swept and devastated from one | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040837 | extremity of the range to the other, and, with the exception of the resinous _Pinus contorta_, Sequoia suffers most of all. Indians burn off the underbrush in certain localities to facilitate deer-hunting, mountaineers and lumbermen carelessly allow their camp-fires to run; but the fires of the sheepmen, or _muttoneers_, form more than ninety per cent. of all destructive fires that | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040838 | range the Sierra forests. It appears, therefore, that notwithstanding our forest king might live on gloriously in Natures keeping, it is rapidly vanishing before the fire and steel of man; and unless protective measures be speedily invented and applied, in a few decades, at the farthest, all that will be left of _Sequoia gigantea_ will be a few hacked and | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040839 | scarred monuments. TWO-LEAVED, OR TAMARACK, PINE (_Pinus contorta_, var._Marrayana_) This species forms the bulk of the alpine forests, extending along the range, above the fir zone, up to a height of from to feet above the sea, growing in beautiful order upon moraines that are scarcely changed as yet by post-glacial weathering. Compared with the giants of the lower zones, | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040840 | this is a small tree, seldom attaining a height of a hundred feet. The largest specimen I ever measured was ninety feet in height, and a little over six in diameter four feet from the ground. The average height of mature trees throughout the entire belt is probably not far from fifty or sixty feet, with a diameter of two | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040841 | feet. It is a well-proportioned, rather handsome little pine, with grayish-brown bark, and crooked, much-divided branches, which cover the greater portion of the trunk, not so densely, however, as to prevent its being seen. The lower limbs curve downward, gradually take a horizontal position about half-way up the trunk, then aspire more and more toward the summit, thus forming a | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040842 | sharp, conical top. The foliage is short and rigid, two leaves in a fascicle, arranged in comparatively long, cylindrical tassels at the ends of the tough, up-curving branchlets. The cones are about two inches long, growing in stiff clusters among the needles, without making any striking effect, except while very young, when they are of a vivid crimson color, and | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040843 | the whole tree appears to be dotted with brilliant flowers. The sterile cones are still more showy, on account of their great abundance, often giving a reddish-yellow tinge to the whole mass of the foliage, and filling the air with pollen. No other pine on the range is so regularly planted as this one. Moraine forests sweep along the sides | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040844 | of the high, rocky valleys for miles without interruption; still, strictly speaking, they are not dense, for flecks of sunshine and flowers find their way into the darkest places, where the trees grow tallest and thickest. Tall, nutritious grasses are specially abundant beneath them, growing over all the ground, in sunshine and shade, over extensive areas like a farmers crop, | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040845 | and serving as pasture for the multitude of sheep that are driven from the arid plains every summer as soon as the snow is melted. The Two-leaved Pine, more than any other, is subject to destruction by fire. The thin bark is streaked and sprinkled with resin, as though it had been showered down upon it like rain, so that | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040846 | even the green trees catch fire readily, and during strong winds whole forests are destroyed, the flames leaping from tree to tree, forming one continuous belt of roaring fire that goes surging and racing onward above the bending woods, like the grass-fires of a prairie. During the calm, dry season of Indian summer, the fire creeps quietly along the ground, | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040847 | feeding on the dry needles and burs; then, arriving at the foot of a tree, the resiny bark is ignited, and the heated air ascends in a powerful current, increasing in velocity, and dragging the flames swiftly upward; then the leaves catch fire, and an immense column of flame, beautifully spired on the edges, and tinted a rose-purple hue, rushes | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040848 | aloft thirty or forty feet above the top of the tree, forming a grand spectacle, especially on a dark night. It lasts, however, only a few seconds, vanishing with magical rapidity, to be succeeded by others along the fire-line at irregular intervals for weeks at a timetree after tree flashing and darkening, leaving the trunks and branches hardly scarred. The | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040849 | heat, however, is sufficient to kill the trees, and in a few years the bark shrivels and falls off. Belts miles in extent are thus killed and left standing with the branches on, peeled and rigid, appearing gray in the distance, like misty clouds. Later the branches drop off, leaving a forest of bleached spars. At length the roots decay, | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040850 | and the forlorn trunks are blown down during some storm, and piled one upon another encumbering the ground until they are consumed by the next fire, and leave it ready for a fresh crop. The endurance of the species is shown by its wandering occasionally out over the lava plains with the Yellow Pine, and climbing moraineless mountain-sides with the | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040851 | Dwarf Pine, clinging to any chance support in rifts and crevices of storm-beaten rocksalways, however, showing the effects of such hardships in every feature. Down in sheltered lake hollows, on beds of rich alluvium, it varies so far from the common form as frequently to be taken for a distinct species. Here it grows in dense sods, like grasses, from | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040852 | forty to eighty feet high, bending all together to the breeze and whirling in eddying gusts more lithely than any other tree in the woods. I have frequently found specimens fifty feet high less than five inches in diameter. Being thus slender, and at the same time well clad with leafy boughs, it is oftentimes bent to the ground when | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040853 | laden with soft snow, forming beautiful arches in endless variety, some of which last until the melting of the snow in spring. MOUNTAIN PINE (_Pinus monticola_) The Mountain Pine is king of the alpine woods, brave, hardy, and long-lived, towering grandly above its companions, and becoming stronger and more imposing just where other species begin to crouch and disappear. At | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040854 | its best it is usually about ninety feet high and five or six in diameter, though a specimen is often met considerably larger than this. The trunk is as massive and as suggestive of enduring strength as that of an oak. About two thirds of the trunk is commonly free of limbs, but close, fringy tufts of sprays occur all | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040855 | the way down, like those which adorn the colossal shafts of Sequoia. The bark is deep reddish-brown upon trees that occupy exposed situations near its upper limit, and furrowed rather deeply, the main furrows running nearly parallel with each other, and connected by conspicuous cross furrows, which, with one exception, are, as far as I have noticed, peculiar to this | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040856 | species. The cones are from four to eight inches long, slender, cylindrical, and somewhat curved, resembling those of the common White Pine of the Atlantic coast. They grow in clusters of about from three to six or seven, becoming pendulous as they increase in weight, chiefly by the bending of the branches. This species is nearly related to the Sugar | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040857 | Pine, and, though not half so tall, it constantly suggests its noble relative in the way that it extends its long arms and in general habit. The Mountain Pine is first met on the upper margin of the fir zone, growing singly in a subdued, inconspicuous form, in what appear as chance situations, without making much impression on the general | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040858 | forest. Continuing up through the Two-leaved Pines in the same scattered growth, it begins to show its character, and at an elevation of about , feet attains its noblest development near the middle of the range, tossing its tough arms in the frosty air, welcoming storms and feeding on them, and reaching the grand old age of years. JUNIPER, OR | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040859 | RED CEDAR (_Juniperus occidentalis_) [Illustration: JUNIPER, OR RED CEDAR.] The Juniper is preminently a rock tree, occupying the baldest domes and pavements, where there is scarcely a handful of soil, at a height of from to feet. In such situations the trunk is frequently over eight feet in diameter, and not much more in height. The top is almost always | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040860 | dead in old trees, and great stubborn limbs push out horizontally that are mostly broken and bare at the ends, but densely covered and embedded here and there with bossy mounds of gray foliage. Some are mere weathered stumps, as broad as long, decorated with a few leafy sprays, reminding one of the crumbling towers of some ancient castle scantily | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040861 | draped with ivy. Only upon the head waters of the Carson have I found this species established on good moraine soil. Here it flourishes with the Silver and Two-leaved Pines, in great beauty and luxuriance, attaining a height of from forty to sixty feet, and manifesting but little of that rocky angularity so characteristic a feature throughout the greater portion, | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040862 | of its range. Two of the largest, growing at the head of Hope Valley, measured twenty-nine feet three inches and twenty-five feet six inches in circumference, respectively, four feet from the ground. The bark is of a bright cinnamon color, and, in thrifty trees, beautifully braided and reticulated, flaking off in thin, lustrous ribbons that are sometimes used by Indians | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040863 | for tent-matting. Its fine color and odd picturesqueness always catch an artists eye, but to me the Juniper seems a singularly dull and taciturn tree, never speaking to ones heart. I have spent many a day and night in its company, in all kinds of weather, and have ever found it silent, cold, and rigid, like a column of ice. | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040864 | Its broad stumpiness, of course, precludes all possibility of waving, or even shaking; but it is not this rocky steadfastness that constitutes its silence. In calm, sun-days the Sugar Pine preaches the grandeur of the mountains like an apostle without moving a leaf. [Illustration: STORM-BEATEN JUNIPERS.] On level rocks it dies standing, and wastes insensibly out of existence like granite, | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040865 | the wind exerting about as little control over it alive or dead as it does over a glacier boulder. Some are undoubtedly over years old. All the trees of the alpine woods suffer, more or less, from avalanches, the Two-leaved Pine most of all. Gaps two or three hundred yards wide, extending from the upper limit of the tree-line to | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040866 | the bottoms of valleys and lake basins, are of common occurrence in all the upper forests, resembling the clearings of settlers in the old backwoods. Scarcely a tree is spared, even the soil is scraped away, while the thousands of uprooted pines and spruces are piled upon one another heads downward, and tucked snugly in along the sides of the | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040867 | clearing in two windrows, like lateral moraines. The pines lie with branches wilted and drooping like weeds. Not so the burly junipers. After braving in silence the storms of perhaps a dozen or twenty centuries, they seem in this, their last calamity, to become somewhat communicative, making sign of a very unwilling acceptance of their fate, holding themselves well up | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040868 | from the ground on knees and elbows, seemingly ill at ease, and anxious, like stubborn wrestlers, to rise again. HEMLOCK SPRUCE (_Tsuga Pattoniana_) The Hemlock Spruce is the most singularly beautiful of all the California coniferae. So slender is its axis at the top, that it bends over and droops like the stalk of a nodding lily. The branches droop | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040869 | also, and divide into innumerable slender, waving sprays, which are arranged in a varied, eloquent harmony that is wholly indescribable. Its cones are purple, and hang free, in the form of little tassels two inches long from all the sprays from top to bottom. Though exquisitely delicate and feminine in expression, it grows best where the snow lies deepest, far | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040870 | up in the region of storms, at an elevation of from to feet, on frosty northern slopes; but it is capable of growing considerably higher, say , feet. The tallest specimens, growing in sheltered hollows somewhat beneath the heaviest wind-currents, are from eighty to a hundred feet high, and from two to four feet in diameter. The very largest specimen | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040871 | I ever found was nineteen feet seven inches in circumference four feet from the ground, growing on the edge of Lake Hollow, at an elevation of feet above the level of the sea. At the age of twenty or thirty years it becomes fruitful, and hangs out its beautiful purple cones at the ends of the slender sprays, where they | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040872 | swing free in the breeze, and contrast delightfully with the cool green foliage. They are translucent when young, and their beauty is delicious. After they are fully ripe, they spread their shell-like scales and allow the brown-winged seeds to fly in the mellow air, while the empty cones remain to beautify the tree until the coming of a fresh crop. | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040873 | [Illustration: STORM-BEATEN HEMLOCK SPRUCE, FORTY FEET HIGH.] The staminate cones of all the coniferae are beautiful, growing in bright clusters, yellow, and rose, and crimson. Those of the Hemlock Spruce are the most beautiful of all, forming little conelets of blue flowers, each on a slender stem. Under all conditions, sheltered or storm-beaten, well-fed or ill-fed, this tree is singularly | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040874 | graceful in habit. Even at its highest limit upon exposed ridge-tops, though compelled to crouch in dense thickets, huddled close together, as if for mutual protection, it still manages to throw out its sprays in irrepressible loveliness; while on well-ground moraine soil it develops a perfectly tropical luxuriance of foliage and fruit, and is the very loveliest tree in the | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040875 | forest; poised in thin white sunshine, clad with branches from head to foot, yet not in the faintest degree heavy or bunchy, it towers in unassuming majesty, drooping as if unaffected with the aspiring tendencies of its race, loving the ground while transparently conscious of heaven and joyously receptive of its blessings, reaching out its branches like sensitive tentacles, feeling | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040876 | the light and reveling in it. No other of our alpine conifers so finely veils its strength. Its delicate branches yield to the mountains gentlest breath; yet is it strong to meet the wildest onsets of the gale,strong not in resistance, but compliance, bowing, snow-laden, to the ground, gracefully accepting burial month after month in the darkness beneath the heavy | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040877 | mantle of winter. When the first soft snow begins to fall, the flakes lodge in the leaves, weighing down the branches against the trunk. Then the axis bends yet lower and lower, until the slender top touches the ground, thus forming a fine ornamental arch. The snow still falls lavishly, and the whole tree is at length buried, to sleep | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040878 | and rest in its beautiful grave as though dead. Entire groves of young trees, from ten to forty feet high, are thus buried every winter like slender grasses. But, like the violets and daisies which the heaviest snows crush not, they are safe. It is as though this were only Natures method of putting her darlings to sleep instead of | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040879 | leaving them exposed to the biting storms of winter. Thus warmly wrapped they await the summer resurrection. The snow becomes soft in the sunshine, and freezes at night, making the mass hard and compact, like ice, so that during the months of April and May you can ride a horse over the prostrate groves without catching sight of a single | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040880 | leaf. At length the down-pouring sunshine sets them free. First the elastic tops of the arches begin to appear, then one branch after another, each springing loose with a gentle rustling sound, and at length the whole tree, with the assistance of the winds, gradually unbends and rises and settles back into its place in the warm air, as dry | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040881 | and feathery and fresh as young ferns just out of the coil. Some of the finest groves I have yet found are on the southern slopes of Lassens Butte. There are also many charming companies on the head waters of the Tuolumne, Merced, and San Joaquin, and, in general, the species is so far from being rare that you can | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040882 | scarcely fail to find groves of considerable extent in crossing the range, choose what pass you may. The Mountain Pine grows beside it, and more frequently the two-leaved species; but there are many beautiful groups, numbering individuals, or more, without a single intruder. I wish I had space to write more of the surpassing beauty of this favorite spruce. Every | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040883 | tree-lover is sure to regard it with special admiration; apathetic mountaineers, even, seeking only game or gold, stop to gaze on first meeting it, and mutter to themselves: Thats a mighty pretty tree, some of them adding, dd pretty! In autumn, when its cones are ripe, the little striped tamias, and the Douglas squirrel, and the Clark crow make a | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040884 | happy stir in its groves. The deer love to lie down beneath its spreading branches; bright streams from the snow that is always near ripple through its groves, and bryanthus spreads precious carpets in its shade. But the best words only hint its charms. Come to the mountains and see. DWARF PINE (_Pinus albicaulis_) This species forms the extreme edge | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040885 | of the timber line throughout nearly the whole extent of the range on both flanks. It is first met growing in company with _Pinus contorta_, var. _Murrayana_, on the upper margin of the belt, as an erect tree from fifteen to thirty feet high and from one to two feet in thickness; thence it goes straggling up the flanks of | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040886 | the summit peaks, upon moraines or crumbling ledges, wherever it can obtain a foothold, to an elevation of from , to , feet, where it dwarfs to a mass of crumpled, prostrate branches, covered with slender, upright shoots, each tipped with a short, close-packed tassel of leaves. The bark is smooth and purplish, in some places almost white. The fertile | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040887 | cones grow in rigid clusters upon the upper branches, dark chocolate in color while young, and bear beautiful pearly seeds about the size of peas, most of which are eaten by two species of tamias and the notable Clark crow. The staminate cones occur in clusters, about an inch wide, down among the leaves, and, as they are colored bright | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040888 | rose-purple, they give rise to a lively, flowery appearance little looked for in such a tree. [Illustration: GROUP OF ERECT DWARF PINES.] Pines are commonly regarded as sky-loving trees that must necessarily aspire or die. This species forms a marked exception, creeping lowly, in compliance with the most rigorous demands of climate, yet enduring bravely to a more advanced age | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040889 | than many of its lofty relatives in the sun-lands below. Seen from a distance, it would never be taken for a tree of any kind. Yonder, for example, is Cathedral Peak, some three miles away, with a scattered growth of this pine creeping like mosses over the roof and around the beveled edges of the north gable, nowhere giving any | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040890 | hint of an ascending axis. When approached quite near it still appears matted and heathy, and is so low that one experiences no great difficulty in walking over the top of it. Yet it is seldom absolutely prostrate, at its lowest usually attaining a height of three or four feet, with a main trunk, and branches outspread and intertangled above | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040891 | it, as if in ascending they had been checked by a ceiling, against which they had grown and been compelled to spread horizontally. The winter snow is indeed such a ceiling, lasting half the year; while the pressed, shorn surface is made yet smoother by violent winds, armed with cutting sand-grains, that beat down any shoot that offers to rise | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040892 | much above the general level, and carve the dead trunks and branches in beautiful patterns. During stormy nights I have often camped snugly beneath the interlacing arches of this little pine. The needles, which have accumulated for centuries, make fine beds, a fact well known to other mountaineers, such as deer and wild sheep, who paw out oval hollows and | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040893 | lie beneath the larger trees in safe and comfortable concealment. [Illustration: A DWARF PINE.] The longevity of this lowly dwarf is far greater than would be guessed. Here, for example, is a specimen, growing at an elevation of , feet, which seems as though it might be plucked up by the roots, for it is only three and a half | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040894 | inches in diameter, and its topmost tassel is hardly three feet above the ground. Cutting it half through and counting the annual rings with the aid of a lens, we find its age to be no less than years. Here is another telling specimen about the same height, years old, whose trunk is only six inches in diameter; and one | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040895 | of its supple branchlets, hardly an eighth of an inch in diameter inside the bark, is seventy-five years old, and so filled with oily balsam, and so well seasoned by storms, that we may tie it in knots like a whip-cord. WHITE PINE (_Pinus flexilis_) This species is widely distributed throughout the Rocky Mountains, and over all the higher of | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040896 | the many ranges of the Great Basin, between the Wahsatch Mountains and the Sierra, where it is known as White Pine. In the Sierra it is sparsely scattered along the eastern flank, from Bloody Caon southward nearly to the extremity of the range, opposite the village of Lone Pine, nowhere forming any appreciable portion of the general forest. From its | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040897 | peculiar position, in loose, straggling parties, it seems to have been derived from the Basin ranges to the eastward, where it is abundant. It is a larger tree than the Dwarf Pine. At an elevation of about feet above the sea, it often attains a height of forty or fifty feet, and a diameter of from three to five feet. | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040898 | The cones open freely when ripe, and are twice as large as those of the _albicaulis_, and the foliage and branches are more open, having a tendency to sweep out in free, wild curves, like those of the Mountain Pine, to which it is closely allied. It is seldom found lower than feet above sea-level, but from this elevation it | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040899 | pushes upward over the roughest ledges to the extreme limit of tree-growth, where, in its dwarfed, storm-crushed condition, it is more like the white-barked species. Throughout Utah and Nevada it is one of the principal timber-trees, great quantities being cut every year for the mines. The famous White Pine Mining District, White Pine City, and the White Pine Mountains have | 60 | gutenberg |
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